In what sense is that group isolated? By virtue of being an elite or by lack of links with other people? The first is tautological, the second is absurd. – post by enkerli

Blogging has entered the mainstream

Probably the core point of this piece. Apparently the one which finds the most support among commenters. Yet “the lead” is so “buried” that this specific point gets almost lost. – post by enkerli

every new medium in history

To enhance a text, statements like these would probably require the apparatus of an actual historical perspective. Chances are, the person who wrote this thought about some analogue or two but failed to really think about the complete history of media. – post by enkerli

Twitter messages, usually sent from mobile phones, are fewer than 140 characters long and answer the question “What are you doing?”

Fairly appropriate description of one form of microblogging. But this would have been an excellent opportunity to discuss what the implications of this potential shift to microblogging really are. Given the source of this piece, one would have expected some insight into the financial implications, at the very least. – post by enkerli

Google, the Wal-Mart of the internet

Such an off-hand comment is a very inefficient way to bring about real discussion. It’s either superfluous or incomplete. – post by enkerli

runs Twitter

Given the context (with Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone as other key figures), this statement is too ambiguous to be really useful. Yes, Williams is CEO and a CEO “runs” a company. But the immediate context for this statement makes it sound as if Williams had single-handedly taken control of Twitter, as a direct consequence of the Blogger buyout. – post by enkerli

These “new media” firms are now suffering from the same advertising slowdown as their offline rivals. Gawker, a gossip-blog empire, has already begun laying off bloggers.

Surprising that such an important part of the story should only merit two sentences in the article. Especially in The Economist. What’s more problematic is that it seems to imply that the Gawker layoffs might be representative of the inexorable effects of the advertising slowdown. In a business-oriented publication, such an assertion merits thorough analysis. – post by enkerli